Currently I teach freshman and senior English, am a wife, mother, grandmother, and attempting to be what Dr. Engle's referred to as the "dutiful daughter" in his selection on George Eliot with regard to my mother. Academically, a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Social Science, International Studies, USF (too many years ago) and M.Ed., Curriculum and Instruction, UNO. For the past 11 years I've work with the National Academy Foundation and helped develop and implement an interdisciplinary curriculum for the Academy of Information Technology. My husband and I travel a good bit, but when we are bound to town by work, we try to spend our weekends at our family home between Bath and Belhaven, NC. It's on a lovely marsh that leads to the Pamlico River/Sound. Quite peaceful. I hope to develop a unit for freshmen that revolves around fairy tales of different cultures that we could use for writing with technology for our partner school in China. I am also thinking of a unit for seniors that would involve the use of podcasts and modern British writers/modern British literary scene. I had been thinking about modern novels for this, however, poetry is my favorite genre yet often the most difficult to teach. I'm hoping submersion in the culture along with the collegiality of my peers will stimulate an awareness of what is going on currently in England, how it's connected to its rich literary past, and how to bring that to life with "real world" applications for my students.

My Portfolio:

Script for ToonDoo Cultural experience with fairy tale told to me on the bus by Zhe Liang. Unfortunately, the pictures and illustrations in Toondoo did not support the plan I made. However, I went ahead with ToonDoo because I wanted to try and become familiar with the software. It was the most frustrating of my experiences so far.

Read the following fairy tale told to me by Xu Lan from the Zhe Liang province along the east coast near Shang Hi. List examples from the story that identify it as a fairy tale. With your partner, research a story from another culture that has similar features. With your partner, write a script of the story and then create a ToonDoo for your story to share with students in China.

A long, long time ago, there lived a man who was a very hard worker. He worked so hard in the fields everyday and had little time for rest or fun. He lived a lonely life returning to any empty house with no one to share his evening meal with. One day, he was crossing the bridge on his way home from the fields. He looked down and saw a beautiful shell. He took the shell home and every day he would polish the shell and lovingly take care of it.

After a couple of weeks, the weary man returned home from the fields. His house was all cleaned up and warm meal was on the table. He didn’t understand how this had happened. Day after day, when he returned home, he continued to find a clean house and warm meal.

He was very curious about this and decided to be sneaky. Coming home early one day, he peered in the window and saw a beautiful young woman preparing a meal. He burst in the door and asked “Who are you and where did you come from?” She replied, I came out of the shell.

Demonstrate the ability to capture an experience Google map of our review of Places To Gather and EatCreated jointly by Cindy Francis & Susan Szep--demonstrates the ability to share and instruct using a multimodal format--

This glogster is also about a cultural experience--demonstrates the ability to capture an experience using a multiimodal format--expressive/expository

The glogster prov

If I were to see
Him from a mile away
I’d know so quickly
That it would be him.
The backward
Baseball cap
And black and white
GraphicT shirt.

If I felt
Hands on my head
I’d know that those
Were his hands.Long, skinny, artistic
fingers
smelling of charcoals and the day’s catch
If I heard a voice
Coming from a rock
I’d know they wereHis words.
And they would flow inside me
Like the wonder of a mother
Giving birth to her son
As he preciously evolves

Unfortunately, the video software didn't save my transitions that I had used for each frame. Ugh. Technology!